Syria

Syrian state television says the country's local and international telephone lines as well as the internet are down because of technical problems. Meanwhile the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW has said that the removal of chemical weapons from Syria may be delayed slightly due to the difficulties of operating during a civil war.

Aid workers said they have a better winter plan this year. Cranes are lifting trailers into place and tents are being packed away as international aid workers rush to winterize a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan — trying to avoid a repeat of last year when three days of torrential rain turned the massive site into a muddy swamp.

Speaking to reporters after a closed briefing for Security Council diplomats, the official — Valerie Amos, the under secretary general and emergency relief coordinator — said that the Syrian authorities had been permitting aid convoys from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, but had refused to allow any from Turkey, which the Syrian government has accused of abetting the insurgency.

Launching the report, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said: "If we do not act quickly, a generation of innocents will become lasting casualties of an appalling war." The study is the latest to attempt to illustrate the heavy toll of Syria's three-year-old civil conflict on children both inside and outside its borders.

More than 5.6 million people inside Syria need assistance, an official at the World Food Program (WFP) said, warning that more Syrians are inching closer to the poverty line as the civil conflict gripping the country continues. The representative and director of the WFP in Syria, Matthew Hollingorth, said in an interview issued on Thursday in the Tishrin newspaper that the number of poor exceeds the organization's capacity, which currently serves 5.5 million displaced people inside and outside Syria.

Food assistance to Syrian refugees in Lebanon has evolved since the start of the refugee influx. What started out as parcels full of essentials like wheat, sugar, oil and other basic food stuffs, morphed into coupons that can be redeemed for the refugees’ choice of items at designated shops and finally, became a blue debit card that refills every month and has already been given to 150,000 Syrians residing in Lebanon. The e-card has many benefits. (..) The best part is, the WFP wholeheartedly follows up on this, to make sure everything is ok. (..) Today, Kevork and Yasmine took their time and a lot of patience to gather as much information as possible for their comprehensive questionnaires to try to piece together what the refugees were eating, whether or not its healthy, balanced, fair-priced, easily accessible and stable, and how well the e-card system is running and if the specified shops are sticking to the guidelines.

Food and shelter are so much more expensive here than in Syria that even formerly middle class families, with substantial savings, are running out of funds. (..) More than 75 percent of the 260 Syrian refugee households surveyed by Oxfam carry debt.

The United Nations has asked for more than $5 billion in humanitarian aid this year for Syria, its biggest financial appeal ever for a single crisis. (..) The cost is greater, but the Syrians prefer the freedom of preparing their own meals. The practice also injects money into the host communities — $160 million from the World Food Program has trickled into local stores in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt so far this year.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) began this week providing assistance to 5,000 Syrian Armenians displaced from Syria who have sought protection in Armenia. The 6-month-assistance project is funded by the government of the Russian Federation. This WFP operation was put in place upon a request from the Ministry of Diaspora, responsible for the overall coordination of assistance to Syrian Armenians. “Syrian Armenians were once part of the thriving Armenian Diaspora in Syria. Many of them have lost their homes and livelihoods due to the conflict in Syria,” said WPF Head of Office in Armenia Maria Lukyanova.